Exploring the impacts of a coffin-lying experience on life and death attitudes of medical and nursing students

Background: Physicians and nurses often exhibit strong negative emotional and behavioral reactions when patients they care for pass away, and death education helps them cope with these difficulties. When implementing death education, the literature shows that experiential activities are more effective than lecturing, and progressive exposure is the best way to reduce death anxieties. This study examined the effects of coffin-lying, an activity sometimes seen in Asian cultures, on life and death attitudes of medical and nursing students. Methods During a period from 2020 to 2021, 134 medical and nursing students from a medical university in northern Taiwan voluntarily participated in this study. Among them, 53 were in the experimental group, who participated in a coffin-lying activity for nearly 3 hours, and the other 81 were in the control group. All participants filled out questionnaires 1 week before the activity (T1), 1 week after the activity (T2), and 6 ~ 11 weeks after the activity (T3). Three waves of data were analyzed by a repeated-measure analysis of variance (ANOVA). Results The “fear of death” and “death avoidance” between the experimental and control groups significantly differed at T2 and T3, and the effects of “love and care” and “feeling of existence” were only manifested at T2. In addition, there were no significant differences between the experimental and control groups in “natural acceptance”, “approach acceptance”, or “escape acceptance”. Conclusions The coffin-lying activity based on desensitization is effective in improving “fear of death” and “death avoidance”, and the effects were extended to 6 ~ 11 weeks. Coffin-lying is not only a well-designed activity that quickly reduces negative tendencies toward death, but it is also worth adopting by medical and nursing schools to make death education more comprehensive.